Bound calm torpor, in this cozy cell
and drugged, woozy with weight
from twenty sentinels stacked;
their musty smell, bodies’ black
blood and hard spines cracked.
Found notations, little atom bombs
from others fallen; prisoners like me, held
within the magnanimous shifting
of gray library afternoons.
Listening to the seductive multitudes
within you, post-Tokyo Rose.
Twenty-two to my zero
in a system rigged by God
where obstacles are air,
not mushroom clouds;
the body, only thought. Talk
to me of secrets higher than
the sweet grief, Mother Japan.
Your dew tears rise to burn
from their water sign, then turn
toward my arrow. Fixed disintegration.
We fly together, solo kamikazes
the savage, true suicide ride
toward the flagging red eye,
a greater fire.